Brian Carter, Social Media Guy

Video Of An Interview: Amazing Video Interview

2011-09-30T19:51:00.001-07:00

Video Of An Interview: Amazing Video Interview

Video: How To Choose The Right Social Media Consultant

2011-07-19T11:20:00.000-07:00

How to choose a Social Media Consultant!

How to Get More Fans on Facebook- Buy it on Scribd!

2011-07-09T13:38:00.000-07:00

How to Get More Facebook Fans eBook 2.0

Likeonomics

2011-05-21T09:41:00.001-07:00

Likeonomics: How Businesses Make Money With Likes

View more presentations from Brian Carter

How to Get More Facebook Fans

2011-05-01T12:05:00.000-07:00

How to Get More Facebook Fans

[update: I'm launching a new ebook on this topic here]

The biggest mistake businesses make with getting Facebook fans is going for quantity rather than quality

Most websites that sell cheap fans can get you numbers, but not targeted fans. These fans will never buy from you.
Some such websites get you international fans, and if you don’t sell internationally, these are a waste of money.

The best way to get more targeted Facebook fans is to use the Facebook ad platform and target your potential buyers with:

Demographics
Psychographics (what they “like” in their profiles)
Geography

You know your best customers. You just need to learn Facebook advertising and target your real potential buyers.

Our students who approach it this way get good prospects as fans for anywhere from 10 to 50 cents apiece, and then their Facebook Pages yield profits (click here to read case studies).

Businesses that get untargeted fans don’t get sales from Facebook and they conclude that Facebook isn’t profitable. But clearly this is because they have the wrong fans.

Get the FanReach 301 Advertising module today and start learning how to get your real potential buyers as fans!

Social Media ROI is Still The Same Old ROI

2011-04-02T18:31:00.000-07:00

I presented on Facebook ROI at Socialize in NYC yesterday, and I’m going to pick on a fellow panelist without naming him, because he said we needed new ROI calculations for Social Media. I didn’t want to contradict him explicitly in front of the audience, but I will here

Does LinkedIn Beat Twitter In B2B Social Media?

2011-04-02T18:25:00.000-07:00

I help both B2C and B2B companies with Social Media and other types of Internet Marketing. In my development of Social Media strategies and tactics for B2B companies, I’ve come to a shocking conclusion:

Twitter is overrated.

Read more about B2B Twitter and LinkedIn

Why Charlie Sheen's Twitter Account Has Nothing To Do With Your Business's Social Media

2011-03-07T12:32:00.000-08:00

Before we get too excited about Charlie Sheen's quick two million followers, let's think about this.

Charlie Sheen is crazy - Your business is not
Charlie Sheen is already rich - You are not
Charlie Sheen is famous - You are not

Your business needs fan and followers that are likely to buy something from you. Chances are you don't need two million of anybody even if you are a business-to-consumer operation.

Charlie Sheen? Nothing to see here. Move along:

If you're B2C, keep building Facebook fan bases filled with prospects that fit your target market's demographics and interests.
If you're B2B, use LinkedIn to find more prospects, Facebook Groups and Pages to herd them, and Twitter and your corporate blog to get people talking about your area of expertise.

Because you may have a 10,000 year old brain, but you don't have the boogers of a 7 year old.

Charlie Sheen does. And he isn't running your business. You are.

How to Get Facebook Fans

2011-01-15T13:23:00.000-08:00

Posted a new article on getting more Facebook fans over on SearchEngineJournal.com.

Have you ever found an easy and superior way to do something, then watched in bafflement as people insist on doing it the hard way?

You will never make money on Facebook if you have the wrong fans. And the best way to get the right Facebook fans for your business is with Facebook ads.

There are two main obstacles to people using Facebook Advertising:
A lot of companies don’t have a budget for Facebook ads
Most people don’t know how to create Facebook ads that are affordable
Let’s tackle both issues…

New Facebook Marketing Posts

2010-10-11T15:22:00.000-07:00

I've been blogging a lot about Facebook marketing and advertising on AllFacebook and Search Engine Journal. Here are some of my latest posts.

How to Generate Revenue Through Facebook Marketing

Do you know how to use a Facebook Page to get sales and new business? We’ve seen (and helped) a number of Fortune 1000 companies use a process that works. We’ve proven it also works for medium sized businesses. The same model also could be used for small businesses as well.

There are two basic steps...

Facebook Ad Algorithm Cracked- Secrets of Successful Facebook Advertisers

You may be running Facebook ad campaigns, but are you getting the most out of every dollar you spend? Our research says you probably aren’t, and here’s why.

GOALS: I wanted to prove some basic relationships amongst the Facebook ad metrics, and see how else the data can guide us in creating more effective Facebook ads. It’s not only about the algorithm(s), but also how the metrics answer questions like “Does my prospect seeing an endorsement from one of their friends always improve my ad results?”

DATA: 172 ads across 10 client campaigns from August 1 – Sept 10, 2010 (roughly 40 recent days).

How Facebook, Radio, & Mimosas Saved a Local Restaurant

To see at the happy crowd at Bistro 17 (facebook|website) on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, you’d never think that just 3 months ago, they were close to shutting down for good. Owner Anna Buckingham says,

“Business was so slow at that point, even during the tourist season, that we were wondering if we should call it quits.”

But now this French-themed restaurant with mouth watering brie and an obsession with containers and dogs is a word-of-mouth sensation and always busy. In fact, they’re one of the few restaurants doing really well in the off-season.

52 Facebook Advertising Tips

Combine AdWords’ copywriting and analytics with image-oriented linkbait, and you’ve got Facebook ads.

And it’s a new system to figure out how to compete in. To that end, I’ve combined my own experience with creating and optimizing Facebook ads for myself and clients with a survey of the existing literature out there, and created a free whitepaper and video training

Facebook Marketing vs Facebook Advertising

I was asked to speak about “Capitalizing on the Twitter Revolution” at Pubcon. So I talked about Facebook.

Why?

I said: “Twitter revolution? Didn’t that happen in 2008?

88,000 Facebook Fans in 4 weeks at Half Price

My major focus the last three months has been Facebook advertising. I’ve been trying to figure out how to get awesome results with Facebook ads. It’s been a personal challenge, because I have more or less mastered Google AdWords and SEO, so I thought: I should be able to figure this out

What Big Brands Are Paying for Facebook Fans

The average price per fan we’re seeing in the industry is $1.50 – 2.00. But expect this to go up over time, because Facebook ads will become more expensive, just as AdWords costs have steadily increased. And Facebook users may become more fickle about what and how much they “like”.

Likeonomics

2010-10-05T12:54:00.000-07:00

Learning about Facebook ads and pondering "The Like Economy"

I'm a big fan of freakonomics and superfreakonomics, are you?

Some points:

Businesses are paying big money for likes; up to $2 per fan for 150,000 or more fans
Likes qualify prospects: when someone likes your ad and fan page, and when fans like your posts, they are opting deeper into your brand and offerings
Likes increase sales: people are buying into you more and increasing their own conversion rate
Likes prove people are paying attention: the first piece of the AIDA process - every like proves you're visible and people are paying attention

Social Media Keynote Speaker and Social Media Results

2010-05-23T14:24:00.001-07:00

Lately I'm working on some new efforts...

The Social Media Expert Interview Series (see the next link)
The Social Media Results Course
- read the page for more info, but includes Mari Smith, Brian Solis, Kelly Olexa, and more
Social Media Keynote Speaking
- see the page for a funny contrary video about why you shouldn't hire me. But then actually go ahead and hire me anyway.

Those are the facebook pages. The keynote website is in my blogroll on the right.

Why Paid Traffic and Fans to Facebook Pages Beats Organic Traffic and Contests

2010-04-29T08:09:00.000-07:00

If you want Facebook traffic or a Facebook fan base that actually makes your company money, read this post to ensure you don't make the same mistakes many are making.

Organic Vs Paid Fans and Traffic

Many companies try to avoid spending money on Facebook ads. That's understandable if

they're in the PR department and there's no budget for it, or
if they aren't skilled at digital advertising, or
if they don't know you can get fans and clicks as low as $0.05 apiece.

But if you can get an budget and a little bit of Facebook advertising training, you can use the incredible targeting power of Facebook advertising to get traffic and fans that are much more likely to buy than organic traffic.

The weakness of organic traffic is that usually it's either:

Word of Mouth: unfortunately, friends of friends may only share one interest or trait, they're not clones of the person who passed you on - or it's
Contest-Incentivized Traffic: usually contest prizes aren't chosen to qualify the entrants, but just to excite them. An iPad prize leads to unqualified fans who are less likely to buy from you than targeted fans from advertising are. So either choose better Facebook contest prizes, or start using Facebook ads.

Facebook Profits and ROI

If you’ve been in Social Media for the last three to four years, you’re well acquainted with the controversy and skepticism surrounding Social Media ROI: lots of debate about what it is, does it exist, etc. Skeptical business owners say things like, “It’s fine for Dell or Ford to make money from Social Media, but what about my small or medium sized business? Who has succeeded besides Fortune 1000 companies?” And though we’ve seen Twitter ROI case studies, there hasn’t been much reported from the Facebook realm.

Here are three examples of positive ROI from Facebook marketing that I presented for the first time February 2011 in Boston. What I like about them is that they’re all small businesses.

Baseball Rose: 400% ROI

Mark Ellingson runs a website call Baseball Rose that offers artificial roses made from real baseballs and softballs. He spent $200.00 to grow his fan base, and has made $1,000 in Facebook revenue from that investment.

Vamplets: 300% ROI

Jaryl LaMort spearheads the Vamplets website which markets and distributes baby vampire dolls. He is spending $250.00 per month on Facebook ads (direct to the website, not a fan acquisition play) and bringing in $1,000.00 revenue per month from Facebook.

Rosehall Kennel: 6500% ROI

Eliot and Emily Roberts of Rosehall Kennel breed German Shepherds. They spent just $61.00 growing their fan base before they sold three puppies. Each puppy goes for $1,350.

What do these companies have in common?

They're all students in my FanReach course
They all spent money to get actual prospects via Facebook ads
They all made profits on those ad spends

How to Get Positive Facebook ROI

How did they do it? Some of it may have been beginner’s luck. Some of it is the right audience for the right offering. In FanReach, we taught them:

How to get cheap Facebook ad CPC, cheap clicks, and target the right prospects while doing that; then…
How to engage those fans and keep your Facebook posts visible to a high percentage of your fans.
Doing just those two things well has led to positive ROI for some businesses.

Engaging your fans well on the fan page while using fan acquisition ads also leads to a percentage of free fans. I've seen as much as 60% of fans gained come from word of mouth during an advertising and engagement campaign.

So don't fear the ads! Get a budget for them, get some training like our FanReach 301 module, and give it a go!

Google Maps to Show Hotel Prices!

2010-03-24T09:15:00.000-07:00

Super interesting development for hotels: Google LatLong: Experiment to show hotel prices on Google Maps And if they can access all those booking engines accurately, what an accomplishment!

Managing Social Media Chatter Without Pissing People Off

2010-03-19T13:41:00.001-07:00

Vis a vis this exchange on Nestle's Facebook page...

I don't think anyone looks good in this sort of exchange. And I *do* think Nestle could have done a better job:

The point at which they said "Thanks for the lesson in manners", which is bitter sarcasm, is where they came off the rails.

There's a good book I've been reading called "The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense" that would help here. There are ways to respond that don't further incite people.

Just as with email, when you get emotional, it's time to step away from the computer for a bit. Social media seems to demand quick responses, but quick responses, in the heat of the moment, can be a mistake.

It's might have been worth waiting a bit to see if any Nestle fans jumped to their defense. Nestle should act as a moderator and give the discussion time to develop before launching into the fray.

On the original point, it's obvious to me that a modification of the Nestle logo that's similar enough to be recognized puts someone in a gray area. The lawyers would have to tease that one out.

The Optimized Way to Survive H1N1

2010-02-05T11:45:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure I have the energy to write this. 5 days unable to go to work, still sick. I haven't been this sick since I had mono at age 17.

Disclaimer: Read this brief from the Centers For Disease Control first. What I've written is supplemental. I'm not the #1 health authority.

First off, don't get H1N1. Use that dumb alcohol hand rub stuff constantly and think before you touch your face. Still, if someone sneezes, you might get it, so...

Tips For Surviving H1N1 In Comfort

You need to have this stuff before you get sick, because the CDC suggests you don't leave home AT ALL until you've been without a fever for 24 hours (and that means no fever WITHOUT having taken any fever reducing meds like tylenol or aspirin).

Wicked sore throat: Get cough drops, numbing throat spray, and throat coat tea. I also made raw ginger tea a lot at the beginning, because that often helps me beat minor colds, and it's nice on the throat. Just dice up a couple slices of raw ginger and microwave in a coffee cup of water- don't fill up too high, because it boils over quicker than normal tea (I think the ginger itself contributes to that).
Sinuses: Get a neti pot and use it as much as possible to keep them clear. Breathe in steam (not too hot) to loosen it, and take mucinex to loosen it. You need lots of toilet paper or kleenex. Drink extra water because your fluids are being used to create mucus.
Sleep: Take some sleepy cold medicine or benadryl. The former sometimes puts me in a "twilight" that's not restful. I prefer benadryl.
Fever and chills: Lots of hot baths. It's ok to be hot- heat kills the virus, and the heat you generate from baths or being under covers is less heat your body has to generate.
Drugs, vitamins and herbs: Vitamin C, goldenseal, Isatis, excedrin, aspirin (only if your over 18), ibuprofen (advil etc),
Doctors? This is a judgment call. By day 5 I thought I must have strep throat, but in comparing the symptoms and course of the illnesses online, I realized it was more likely H1N1, and that antibiotics for either might only reduce my illness by a few days. Going to the doctor may mean infecting other people, so think about it.

Social Media ROI Presentation

2010-01-31T15:30:00.001-08:00

I was in Austin 10 days ago doing a social media ROI presentation. That link will take you both to the powerpoint slides and an mp3 of it.

As soon as I get my FLIP back from the person I accidentally left it with, if the video's any good, I'll post that somewhere too.

Advertising on Twitter for Results

2009-12-04T13:08:00.000-08:00

Just wrote a new post on the TweetROI blog...

I recently finished a post on Search Engine People about the 5 Things I Hate About Social Media. I don't think it's live yet. But one of them is the low expectations people have for results. Evidently, expecting to get ROI from Social Media is like asking Forest Gump to learn Calculus.

I disagree. You shouldn't advertise or market without expecting results. And you should use platforms that help you get results.

Read the rest here: Advertising on Twitter for Results

How to Be a Social Media Guru: 7 Easy Steps!

2009-10-02T16:20:00.000-07:00

It's very simple.

Shave your head bald.
Buy glasses and dark clothing. No collars. Extra points for thin black wool sweaters
Be likeable or serious. Choose one. If you choose likeable, suck up to everyone. If you choose serious, be arrogant and piss people off on purpose (and lose your sense of humor if you have any).
Talk about "conversations" a lot.
Read a lot of social media blogs and then write good blog posts regurgitating the same ideas.
Pretend you're successful.
Speak at conferences.

Do these 7 steps, and I guarantee you will be perceived as a social media guru in no time!

New Indoor Rock Climbing Blog

2009-08-15T14:44:00.000-07:00

Not exactly social media just yet (I'll get into that with this new site later), but I decided it was time to start some new websites on topics I'm passionate about, and one of those is rock climbing.

Here in SC I don't get out to real mountains enough but I have been in some rock climbing gyms, and what with all my traveling that seems more like my near future in climbing.

So check out my new site, RockClimbingIndoor.com and let me know what you think!

Top Hashtags on Twitter

2009-02-06T07:25:00.000-08:00

On twitter, those words with # before them are called hashtags. They mark tweets from a certain group or for a certain effort.

For example:

#tweetsgiving was for tweets to help a thanksgiving charity effort

Some of the top hashtags in use on Twitter these days are:

#gno same thing for Tues nights' 9pm Girls Night Out chat
#journchat is when people are tweeting as part of the journchat weekly discussion
#tcot top convervatives on twitter
#followfriday who you'd suggest people follow, all day every Friday
And of course, whatever conference is going on at the time, they usually have a hashtag for people who are tweeting from it

You can see tweets with hashtags and their trends at sites like:

For more, here's the really nerdy info about hashtags.

Redneck Twitter Tips

2009-02-05T17:17:00.000-08:00

Created this for the GSI Social Media brunch I did today-

Larry Possum from the Southern rock band Soul Possum guest starred with his incredible...

REDNECK TWITTER TIPS!

1. tell the truth, but whole truth, don't like about if ya married to sister, ya, there's nothing wrong with that, but you know lot of people don't understand

2. so lahk be yurself but like not as stupid, not like drunk all the time, not lahk sittin around on couch in your undies- but be yurself

3. you can talk about anything lahk yer dog, you should tell people about yur dog, lahk specially if it dahd and yer sad cuz then ppl will feel bad for you and they foller you- that's called a pity foller- hey that's as good as any other foller- lahk i ah say, follers is follers!

4. yeah if yer a redneck lahk me you prolly dont have- friends- but also you prolly don't have a blog, cuz you can really write, ya know- mah mom tho she's a genius, she made it all the way to the second grade- she's a genius! but if ya don't have a blog, you can still uh link to other ppl's blogs and they'll like be yur best friend- not lahk the kinda best friend that'll help you when yer so drunk yer throwin up on everything, but like you know, the kinda friend that'll tell ya if yer fly's down- yeah

5. and fer some strange reason all dese twitter folks they like uh jokes and they lahk uh pictures of cats with misspelled words on em, i dunno i thought all these uh ppl were educatered you know more than me, but they sure do lahk those cats with misspelled words on em

6. if you need uh a few follers, just foller all dese folks who foller lahk 600 billion people cuz they want everybody to think that uh there everybody's friend you know? (whisper) they're not! but hey, follers is follers!

7. yeah and uh keep it short, you know, if ya can you should uh definitely consider keeping yer tweets less than uh 200 characters- yeah that's real important

that's already like twelve tips thar

8. another thing- you know if ya can, you can be contrervershall- i do dat i didn't know i wuz but some ladies told me i was sexist and i was some kinda missus gymnast- which is weird cuz i've never done a flip or nothing- but so turns out ahm just natchrally pretty vershall- and that gets me lots of follers and replies and hate mail and follers and hey follers is follers!

man that's already like twenty twitter tips raht thar-

9. so uh lahk one more tip- uh, gotta be a good one- oh yeah, you can get lots of girls on twitter- you know, prettier than yer sister even- and uh, yeah lots of girls and there's so many girls that you can find a few that lahk you no matter how weird you are- i mean look at me, ahm a rpetty normal guy, but if yer weird you can still get some girls to foller ya, and hey, girl follers are girls follers! raht?

yeah thanks and everything that was like twenty five twitter tips raht there

ok- thanks, so um you have any questions for me, cuz ahm lahk a twitter expert.

ah toldja how to do it, toldja how to do it.

2,056 Random Things About Me!

2009-02-05T15:22:00.000-08:00

This got some buzz but you can't see it if you're not my facebook friend (why aren't you?) so here it is:

2,056 Random Things About Me!

Tue 6:40pm | Edit Note | Delete

Hey, Brian wrote 2,056 random things about himself and so YOU HAVE TO DO THE SAME THING OR YOU ARE A LOSER THAT DOESN'T CARE ABOUT HIM AS A FRIEND.

1. My name is pretty random.
2. So is my face.
3. Random numbers are really random.
4. I like ponies.
5. Random numbers from computers aren't really random.
6. I have all day to write this list because I have no life.
7. I used to have a job but all I did was write facebook notes so I got fired.
8. I don't cut my toenails everyday.
9. I like baby seals.
10. Mango juice is awesome.

(imaginary time passes)

122. Lists like these are cool!
123. I love lists!
124. Facebook rocks!
125. I'm texting someone right now

(imaginary time passes)

1623. I think I'm delirious!
1623. Hyenas and lollypops!
1623. Rainbows are smelly.

(imaginary time passes)

2053. A cop just told me to move on cuz I'm parked in a K-Mart parking lot writing this
2054. I've cried the entire last three hours (the last 564 random things)
2055. I love you.
2056. I love lamp. No really, I love lamp.

I think I might die now.

Are you really my friend?

Write a list like this. But include all 2056 items.

Updated on Tuesday - Comment

Loren Baker at 6:49pm February 3

I like ponies, but I HATE baby seals with an absolute passion. Except for dinner.

Dana Willhoit at 7:04pm February 3

2056 random things about me...my BRAIN CELLS! They're all completely random.

Also - I have recently realized that Loren Baker eats baby seal mignon, and have reported him to PETA.

Lauren Lehman-Ice at 7:29pm February 3

You haven't changed a bit since High School.... maybe that should be random thing #2057?

Brian Carter at 7:30pm February 3

lol

Manda Otto at 7:59pm February 3

Ted Paproski at 8:23pm February 3

You really aren't right, are you? What do you blame it on?

Brian Carter at 8:35pm February 3

I blame you, Ted

Ted Paproski at 8:38pm February 3

that is great Brian, something else I may need to make amends for.

Jerri Ann Reason at 11:05pm February 3

I am a big talker, heck I have 10 blogs, but 2056 Random Things About Me, that's more than a RANDOM internet friend needs to know about me, lmao, alien abductor at that

Jerri Ann Reason at 11:08pm February 3

where is the Random Thing about you being an alien abductor, I wanna hear more about this story......alien lover here

Mark Alves at 11:39pm February 3

#1,785 was LOL my favorite. Thanks for DMing me the complete list.

Brian Carter at 11:51pm February 3

lol np

Brian Carter at 11:51pm February 3

i know, those aliens said some strange things about you

Jerri Ann Reason at 11:55pm February 3

why would you let the aliens talk bad about me, heck I am probably the size of 3 of those aliens, I'm watching the biggest loser so I"m in "I'm so fat mode" but not in "I'm so alien", lmao

Dana Lookadoo at 12:06am February 4

Of course, Brian, you would go above and beyond! Actually, I've been waiting to find out if you've ever been covered in guacamole?

Brian Carter at 12:11am February 4

almost EVERY night

Jerri Ann Reason at 12:22am February 4

did I mention I don't like guacamole? neither do aliens

Scotty Szanto-Nicodemus at 6:38am February 4

2053. A cop just told me to move on cuz I'm parked in a K-Mart parking lot writing this

Bwahahaha!! I have a built-in defense to use on cops when I get pulled over...when they ask what I do for a living, I simply reply with a sad puppy look on my face, "I'm a public school teacher, sir."

Works every time! lol

The 50 Most Famous People On Twitter

2009-02-02T13:23:00.003-08:00

20 already famous people we already know about.
30 people that nobody outside social media wants to know about.

How to Increase Your Twitter Followers If You're Kevin Rose

2009-02-02T13:19:00.001-08:00

Invent Digg

That's it!

5 Critical Social Media Sites (Time is Money)

2009-02-02T13:01:00.000-08:00

Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
YouTube
Flickr

That's it. Everything else is optional.

How to Get 15,000 Twitter Followers

2009-02-02T12:54:00.001-08:00

Follow interesting people
Say interesting things to them
Talk to people who talk to you
Retweet interesting stuff

That's it. Do that for a year.

Stop reading and go Twitter. You're wasting time on blogs.

Oh yeah, retweet this.

;-)

How To Retweet Etiquette: Format and Convention

2009-01-26T08:08:00.001-08:00

Since Strunk & White are unlikely to write a guide to retweeting, and I didn't see one, people on Twitter suggested I contribute this.

This article is not only help for noobs but also an effort toward standardization.

The retweet phenomenon was not something forseen by Twitter and it's not part of their web interface. You can use an app like TweetDeck to do it. But evidently not all apps use the same retweet format? That's just ridiculous. It's been suggested that app developers especially should conform to a standard retweet convention.

I hate to suggest rules for Twitter, but because of the apps and because the variation confuses noobs, I'd suggest you conform, lol.

Retweet Formats:

Most common: RT @originaltwitterer text link
Retweet @ originaltwitterer text link
R/T @ originaltwitterer text link

For example:

I tweeted...

Funny video about Different Generations Working Better Together http://bit.ly/7Iqf0

And one retweet was...

RT @briancarter: Funny video about Different Generations Working Better Together http://bit.ly/7Iqf0

Here's a "via" type of retweet:

RT: For a very small fee, I can teach you how to make money on Twitter asking for very small fees. (via @briancarter)

But I'd suggest you don't use via- I'm not sure if apps like @danzarrella's retweet mapper that use the search.twitter.com API can catch those retweets. One of the reasons for doing retweets like everyone else does is so that apps like that can get all the relevant tweets and count them accurately.

Commenting On What You're Retweeting:

Before the RT, Retweet, or R/T
After but with some punctuation before

Before the RT part...

lol nice RT @GiddiupGirl: @briancarter You really don 't want her bringing traffic to the house organically ; }

The "lol nice" is my comment.

After the retweet with punctuation...

RT @briancarter: I like my women like I like my iphones: colorful, fun, and touch-sensitive [lmao]

The "lmao" is this person's comment and they put it in brackets

RT @briancarter: For a very small fee, I can teach you how to make money on Twitter asking for very small fees. <- Still laughing

Their comment is "Still laughing" and they indicated about what with the arrow.

Some people use an asterisk like this:

RT @briancarter: For a very small fee, I can teach you how to make money on Twitter asking for very small fees. * Still laughing

Variations:

You can edit their original tweet text to fit in your comments- when you retweet, that's your tweet- you can do whatever you want to the content, especially if you disagree.
But don't be a humor terrorist and retweet people incorrectly. That would just be mean.
Some people use via instead... but I don't like it.
It looks like perhaps half of the RT-style retweeters put a colon after the twitterer's name, but I don't see the need for that. It might be encoded in one of the apps?

WTH is Via?

I don't know. I don't use it and people appear to be using it different ways. Some people RT someone and via something else, like the website it came from.

But if you can propose a standard usage of via and you conform to standard RT format, I'll reconsider.

Social Media Trifecta: Effective, Affordable Social Media Marketing

2009-01-11T11:43:00.000-08:00

If you don't know me that well, I'm a results-focused optimizer. I don't like to waste time. I like to create efficient systems that get results. Then I want to use them and teach them.

I spent most of 2008 developing a social media marketing and social networking system that works. It gets great results. I've proved it. It's working for others, and it will work for you. The system is...

The Social Media Trifecta... my three-pronged social media marketing technique for increasing your reputation, traffic, leads, sales, and networking via your

Your Blog
Twitter
Social Bookmarking

Back in December, I did a paid, and well-received 3-hour webinar on my Social Media Trifecta.

Here's a 14 minute audio/slide overview, humorously previewed in my fun Pubcon presentation on the same subject:

We recorded and edited the 3-hour in-depth How To Do The Social Media Trifecta webinar and now we're selling it online. The webinar's value to you is between $500-$50,000, depending on what you use it for, how much energy you put into it, and how you monetize it on the backend.

What are the Social Media Trifecta Techniques Worth To You?

Example: The value of Trifecta PR our interactive agency, Fuel Interactive, has received is close to $50,000. And we didn't have a $50,000 PR budget, so leveraging our time and effort via the Trifecta techniques was a major win for our agency. With it, we generated hundreds of links from other sites (these have major search ranking value and lead to more traffic to our site), industry buzz, guest blogging and speaking opportunities, as well as increased our expertise in our clients' eyes.
Sales: If you use the Social Media Trifecta to generate an email list that leads to sales for the next year, if could be worth six figure$ to you.
Building Your Brand: Even if you only used the Trifecta for branding for 3 months, it should yield you a good $10,000 in terms of SEO value, direct traffic, and PR value.
Opportunity Benefits: It's impossible to estimate the value of the networking that can happen from using the Trifecta-by establishing your expertise/talent/focus socially, you can find a new business partner or a new referral source that could be worth tens of thousands of $ for years.

Given all of that, the $297 price tag on the seminar is an incredible deal.

Here are some of the topics we covered in the 3 hour webinar:

What is Social Media and how to do it appropriately for your business
How to Get New Business Through Online Networking and Reputation
The 5 Steps of Optimization (How to Get the Most Out Of Everything You Do!)
Using the 5 Steps to creating your Social Media Business Plan
What is The Social Media “Trifecta” ? How to Blog, Social Bookmark and Twitter for Mega-Results
How to Increase Your Traffic, Subscribers, and Followers
Social Ubiquity: Being Everywhere That Matters
How to Protect your brand from Social Media attacks
How to be Compelling in Social Media
Content Writing Strategies That Work
Preventing Copyright Problems
Demonstration of Social Networking Tools and Hands-On Practice

The webinar sales page is not ready yet, but if you want to learn more,
sign up for this email list:
Private, no spam, double opt-in (you'll receive a confirmation email)

Nominate a MILT

2008-12-11T17:22:00.000-08:00

In anticipation of the launch of our new MILT T-shirt Store, I'm announcing the beginning of the MILT awards. We're going to eventually announce the #1 Mom I'd Like to Tweet on Twitter, along with a top ten list.

The top five nominees as of Dec 31st, 2008 will win a free MILT t-shirt AND a special twitter avatar symbol of their superMILTness.

Here's how we're starting. We're nominating milts in the Shorty Awards.

What qualifies someone to be a MILT?

Are they a mom?
Do you want to tweet with them on Twitter?
If yes and yes, nominate them!

The easy way is to go here and choose milt in the category drop down.

but if you tweet it manually, YOU MUST USE THIS FORMAT FOR THE VOTE TO COUNT:

To nominate someone, tweet @shortyawards with a @nominee and a #category, and why you think they should win.

For example

@shortyawards I nominate @creativewisdom in the category #milt for creating the milt t-shirt designs!

If you don't start the tweet with @shortyawards it, won't work.

If you don't put #milt in it, it won't work

If you don't put the nominee's @twittername in it, it won't work.

Check this URL to see if it worked (but give it a minute first!):
http://shortyawards.com/category/milt

MILT t-shirt designs by @creativewisdom Leah Dossey of Blue Leaf | Creative

Also check out the MILT Facebook Group!

.

WHY Human Rights Day??? Why You? Why Me?

2008-12-10T10:48:00.000-08:00

I had no idea what Human Rights Day was before I met Anca Foster on Twitter.

Anca is a fun, witty web designer originally from Romania who likes awesome music. We engaged in a "Random-Off" where we competed to see who could say the most random surrealistic non-sequitur. It was great. I let her win. We later tried to have an Ego Competition, but that turned out kinda boring, since Anca wouldn't admit I was cooler than her.

She told me to watch this killer video on Human Rights with the neato Neil-Young-ish soundtrack.

Positive Social Action and Social Media

I agreed to get involved in promoting Human Rights Day via social media. I thought that besides the great cause, it would be good to see how much exposure and what results we could get in social media for a non-profit cause. We knew what a success Blog Action day has been. We saw the success of the charitable non-profit Tweetsgiving while we were working on this...

And really, it's too early to go into the stats around Human Rights Day and the success of our tactics, so let me just talk about why Human Rights Day matters.

Human Rights? Who Gives a $%&#???

"So what? Who cares?"

Yeah, that's a pretty disaffected attitude, not uncommon for an American, really. WIIFM- what's in it for me? As an advertiser I know I have to think that way about my audience. Advertising often appeals to people's lowest motives, their selfishness....

But with this cause, I have to appeal to your higher motives, your best self, the part of you that at one time actually like John Lennon's "Imagine".

Put simply: If you could do something EASY in 30 seconds to deal with the fact that people just like you are RIGHT NOW being enslaved, tortured, and oppressed, would you?

Well YOU CAN.

If you're reading this, you're extraordinarily lucky, privileged, possibly even spoiled.
You might think you deserve the riches and relaxation and awesomeness of America just because you were born here.
Your selfishness may have been rewarded over and over until you found yourself incapable of caring about the plight of those in other countries.
You might think it's not your problem. You can't do anything about it. "It's messed up, yeah, but what can I do?"

You can do a lot:

Sign the Human Rights Petition
Tweet about @humanrightsday
Write a blog post like this and tweet about it. Or tweet about this one.
Gasp- you could even email your friends and family about it. Spamming for the greater good, I suppose. ;-)

It's really so easy to help this campaign, if you don't do it you're probably pathologically selfish or possibly a sociopath who will one day become a serial killer.

That was the guilt-dagger for you. LOL

Happy Human Rights Day :-)

Brian

oh and here's the link to the dec 10 hrd post

I have 12 seconds to be funny! Really SHORT funny videos.

2008-12-06T13:19:00.000-08:00

Wow that's pressure. That's a REALLY quick joke. Yikes!

My arm is up here on 12seconds.tv

I'm now on 12 seconds, a sort of video version of Twitter... and I'm trying to figure out how to be funny on there. Check it out and give me feedback!

Thanks!

Tag: Brian Carter Is It. (And so I interview myself…)

2008-11-24T07:02:00.001-08:00

Image by Pat McDonald via FlickrI groaned when Gina LaGuardia sent me this. I was flattered, and Gina is awesome, but some people recently accused me of being a Social Media Narcissist. Yeah, they're fun people, aren't they?

Well, interviewing myself is not the best way to appear to be less self-centered, is it? :-)

But Brian Carter is "it". Oh yes, he is so it.

ok THAT was narcissistic.

So what does the image to the right have to do with it? Nothing- Zemanta suggested it. I'm not a dancer and my wife doesn't do the splits. But I thought it was kinda cool and romantic and sexy.

Twitter Tag says I should "Share seven facts about yourself in the post — some random, some weird, some pimpy."

All my facts are pimply. I mean pimpy. I don't know what that means. But I'll try anyhow

I've played guitar for 19 years. Mostly acoustic. I've recorded about 90 hours of music. Most of it's not online. Most of it is just guitar, but on some of it I actually sing- yes, I'm scared too.

I used to rock climb when I lived in a state that had objects taller than 40 feet. I bouldered without a safety rope. I climbed at best 5.10b sport climbs. I'm a monster when I'm in rock climbing shape and have a few red bulls. I can't wait til I can do it again more.

I love feta cheese. At times I have eaten 4 lbs of it a week. I put it on angel hair pasta, often with diced olives and garlic.

One of my dogs is named Brad Pitt, because he's so good looking. The other is named Serotonin (Sera for short), because she's crazy and need some kind of neurochemical help.

My wife and I plan to adopt two children - and tell one of them we only wanted the other one - but they were a package deal. Then I will try hard to make sure their therapy doesn't start til after they leave my house.

I was a painfully shy nerd as a kid, so it's miraculous that I speak professionally, and that I go after conference speaking gigs. I owe that to Toastmasters, a bunch of San Diego and San Francisco comedians that helped me learn stand-up comedy, and one awesome pro keynote motivational speaker.

My wife was my teacher - RELAX, it was in grad school! We were both adults. But when we started dating, I kept hearing Van Halen's "Hot For Teacher" on the radio.

Random and Pimply enough?

ok, now I'm going to tag:

Twitter Tag Rulez:

Link your original tagger(s)
List these rules on your blog.
Share seven facts about yourself in the post — some random, some weird, some pimpy.
Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

PonyCon: Matt Cutts Loves Ponies

2008-11-18T10:24:00.000-08:00

The shocking thing about PubCon this year was that a little pink pony took PubCon over all by itself. Kristy Ann Bolsinger, Magical Mistress of the Pony, said PubCon was basically "PonyCon".

The PonyCon pictures are a who's who of the search and social media industry. Dozens of bigwigs loved the pony. Some were baffled by it.

Matt Cutts managed to get into the most pony pictures. I guess he likes cats AND ponies.

Yes I started the pony meme, but it's out of my control now. The pony has its own Twitter profile, for goshbajeezy's sake.

The pony story began in the twitter bios of Brian Carter and Kristy Ann Bolsinger.

I said I was giving away free ponies, and she said she loved ponies. I said I couldn't bring her pony. She was sad. (Read the pony tweet history here.)

So, I bought a pony here at the Vegas airport. (I asked the lady "What's your cheapest pony-related item?")

Note the neon so bright it's unreadable. And I gave the pony away during my pubcon presentation ("The Social Media Trifecta" during the Big Sexy Buzz panel).

Here's how I announced it, the second to last slide in my powerpoint deck:

"Pony time" is not like Borat's "sexy time"...

...because it was announced during a Big Sexy Buzz presentation given by me, so that whole time was sexy. Of course.

Pony time was ponier, not sexier, than the rest of the time.

I ran a contest so that ANYBODY had equal chance to win the pony. All you had to do was have a name that sounds like MOLSINGER.

And, amazingly, Kristy Ann Bolsinger won!

So amazing things happened for Kristy Ann and the pony...

They met Google Monolith Matt Cutts and Pubcon originator Brett Tabke.

Matt and Brett enjoyed meeting the pony and talking about its hopes and dreams.

Kristy Ann is the guardian of those dreams, and will be ensuring pony dreaminess for years to come.

Brett and Matt discovered that have pony presenting skills heretofore undiscovered. Note their symmetrical hand presentation.

ALSO Zi.ma loves ponies!

Ok, enough exposition, here's a bunch of fun pony photos:

Rand Fiskin + mozPony

Bruce Clay + SEO Pony

Lee Odden + BigListPony

OilyPony + Todd Friesen

Stephan Spencer knows something special about the pony.

Bunny + Pony

Jane talks to the pony in a funny accent.

Graywolf loves him some Whitepony

Brent Payne (lookin like a bad mofo) + BigWatahPony

PamPony + MadPony

ShelPony + PolkPony + MoPony

LoneStarPony + lotsa love from Brandy and Manda

LuebPony

ShoePony

MoPony and HartPony

Pony Progenitors

And that's just a few of the pony pictures- we'll release the rest later this week for full perusal and ponyjoyment.

AND EVIDENTLY, SOME DRUNK GUY KILLED KRISTY ANN'S CAMERA SO IF THERE ARE ANY PHOTOS MISSING, BLAME THE RANDOM DRUNK GUY.

Bye!

Why People Retweet You

2008-11-08T14:21:00.000-08:00

"Hey, guys!!! ...listen to what Brian just said!"

I recently wrote some related posts about Tweetbait/twitter viral retweets and monitoring your reputation on Twitter (ORM).

So...

How do you monitor which of your tweets people retweet?

-- What's important about that?
-- What does it tell you?
-- How can you use it?

Oh, yes, I will be endeavoring to answer those very questions, my friends.

How to See When People Retweet You

If you're not using search.twitter.com, you're probably not seeing when people retweet you. Tweetdeck is an alternative, but sometimes it misses tweets or mixes up their order. Just use search.twitter ... mkay?

Go to search.twitter.com, and type in:
rt OR retweet, @yourtwittername

If you aren't smart enough to replace that with your actual twitter name, please just reach over and turn off the computer right now ;-)

Who cares if people retweet you?

Retweets Indicate Quality Tweets: Retweets are STRONG votes for the quality of your tweet. These may be your best tweets. So, what do they have in common? And why aren't your other tweets getting retweeted?

You Have Fans! These people REALLY like you, especially if they retweet you more than once. You should thank them. I almost always thank people for retweets in DM's... personally... with their name, and maybe some personal comment or personal attack j/k. Over time, more substantial thanks may be in order: gifts, money, giving up your first born- the list goes on.

Increases Reputation & Followership: These people just voted for you in front of all of their followers. That increases your visibility and reputation, and can attract new followers to you.

Does it matter how many followers you have (for retweets)?

You probably need a certain number of followers to get retweeted, just in terms of the percentages, although extremely strong connections could lead to a lot of retweets even from a small follower list.

The number of people in your follower list listening to your tweets depends on the time of day, and many other factors, so I'd GUESS only about 10-15% of them are listening at any one time, and I've seen an average of about 35 clicks on my tweeted urls- which is about a 1.4% conversion rate (this was around the time I had about 2,000 followers).

Recently I've seen a huge degree of retweeting- 35 retweets in the last day of my 130 tweets, which is about 25% conversion rate- amazing, but of course that included THE FIRST STAND UP COMEDY CONCERT EVER ON TWITTER, so that's anomalous, because of the incredible funniness which I put forth ;-)

On a more normal day... Nov 6 2008 I tweeted 55 times and received 18 retweets, oh, wow that's still high- like 33%. Dang it. Ok, I'll have to write another post about how to be awesome, I guess. And incredibly narcissistic- no wait, you're born with that.

Ok good on Nov 1, I only got 4% retweets. From about 100 tweets. So I must have been on crack AND boring. Weird.

How Can You Use This?

Monitor what people say about you, and what they retweet.
Once a week, look back at what people retweeted.
Look at what types of tweets they retweet- Useful tips? Links? Insights? Comedy? Pithiness? Cleverness? Controversy? News? What people like about YOU may be different than what they like about me.
Look at what they DON'T retweet.
Think about tweeting more of the kinds of things people retweet. I don't think you need to try to be retweetable all the time, but keep in mind what you've learned about what people think is valuable enough to share.

ONE Quick and Dirty Twitter ORM Tip

2008-11-04T10:04:00.000-08:00

Seems like everyone's doing some kind of Online Reputation Management (ORM) these days.

Image Source

The field is exploding with new tools. A friend is alpha testing a pretty advanced ORM tool right now. She found out I was being twitter-stalked and blogged about by, as she puts it, "a Japanese Sex Blogger" - which is weird, but not surprising since I'm so incredibly charismatic and sexy.

Or so people tell me...

What can I say.

And when Brett Tabke had to fill some canceled spots on an ORM panel at Pubcon the other day, he got 12 emails back within 5 minutes. Pretty popular. Evidently everybody thinks they know something about ORM.

So I'm not going to go into anything INCREDIBLY advanced here.
This is just a little Twitter ORM tip.

THE ISSUE:

If you didn't know, Twitter's search function sucked so badly they removed it after buying search.twitter.com, which used to be called Summize.

If you're not using it, you're missing out, because occasionally Twitter won't show all your @replies, AND it will only show replies to you that START with @yourname.

So you could be missing a huge amount of discussion that mentions you. And people may think you're stuck up because you're not replying.

And you might be stuck up, for all I know.

So.

Monitor Your Twitter ORM Like Dis:

1. Always have a separate browser tab open with search.twitter.com

2. Search it with a string like this,
briancarter OR "brian carter" -from:briancarter
...but replace with your twitter profile name
(the key to search.twitter.com is boolean skillz)

that gives you all mentions of your profile and your name but NOT your tweets

3. Watch the browser tab title for updates.

If you do it in Firefox, the browser tab automatically updates to show (#) number of new tweets that fit that query. See that number 5??? Yeah.

4. Refresh.

When new ones come up, click on the Refresh link to see them

Obviously, you can get a lot more creative with what you use search.twitter.com for - and you can take the RSS and throw that into a monitoring dashboard... more on those things later!

Hope you enjoyed this little tip. :-)

Brian

How to Dominate Facebook with Twitter

2008-11-04T09:00:00.000-08:00

If you already tweet a lot, you can turn that into a huge advantage on Facebook.

How?

Install the Twitter App for Facebook.

Everytime you tweet, it changes your Facebook status.

So what?

Whenever your Facebook friends log in, what they see at the top are: the people with the most recently updated statuses.

See?

If you tweet frequently, you're always at the top of all your friends' Facebook pages.

Top of mind.... Increased mindshare... Easy.

ALSO It Converts Facebookers into Twitterers in Your Network

Your constant tweeting makes the Facebookers curious about "this Twitter thing". Two non-Twittering Facebookers have asked me about this in the last week.

Here's one:

And another:

Then they come on Twitter, and your Twitter network expands and grows in power.

Your network's power is not just about numbers, but also about strength of relationship- the strong relationships you already have are more powerful online, if you can get your friends involved in social media.

Power from Despair.com's Demotivator series

2008 Coolest Twitter Avatar Awards

2008-11-04T08:40:00.001-08:00

Perhaps it's appropriate that this begins on Election Day.

The TwitterStache Awards were very popular, and funny, but here's a more serious one.

Who has the Coolest Twitter avatar pic?

I have a few in mind that I like... But I'd like to get your nominations-

Please tweet me your nominees by end of day Friday November 7th, and then I'll add them to this post and you can vote in the comments.

But first... Your nominations???

Tweetbait: 7 Ways to Get Retweets

2008-11-01T13:16:00.000-07:00

For those who don't know about linkbait:

There are some copywriters and internet marketers who focus on Linkbait... examples include:
Lyndon's fake story
10 Reasons It Would Rule To Date A Unicorn
9 Reasons Not To Date A T-Rex
Coolness
Check out Problogger's 20 Linkbait Techniques, good stuff.

"Ooh I wanna RT @briancarter!"

That's what all the girls say.

The format for a retweet is either

retweet @briancarter Something really cool Brian just tweeted!
RT @briancarter Something really cool Brian just tweeted!

Example:

I'm not a guy who does this stuff intentionally- some people do it very intentionally, and it's kind of manipulative. I'm an idea guy... some of my ideas just turn out to be more viral than others. I was actually surprised how much my stuff was getting retweeted. Some get sphunn, dugg, stumbled, linked, and retweeted more than others.

I wanted to look at some recent retweeting to examine the virality of tweets in particular. What tweets get retweeted more? Is there any pattern?

This came to my attention because, after getting about 1,500 twitter followers, I started seeing a lot of retweets in my search.twitter.com ORM...

24 hours of retweets of my stuff to the right -->

I even saw retweets of retweets by people who weren't following me. Wow. THAT's a viral tweet.

In addition to search and social media, I do comedy, and I tweet a lot, so chances are, someone's going to find a tweet of mine useful or funny and retweet it. But what gets retweeted the most?

You can measure that in

Number of retweets
Clicks displayed by an url tracking service like zi.ma; when people retweet your zi.ma link, you see a much higher number of clicks on that url.

So I did a review of 10 days of tweets and retweets (that reminds me of a funny story, some other time) and here's what I found:

The 7 Biggest Determinants of Retweeting Virality:
Not an exhaustive list, just what I saw in my sample.

1. Linkbait blog posts: Appeal of the associated blog post or link is critical - in reality, Twitter may only potentiate the power of the linkbait it points to.

2. Repetition: Tweeting about it multiple times helps only to a point- there is likely a maximum number of times you should retweet yourself to get more exposure (people are on a different times anyway, so this is ethical) but to avoid annoying followers- I'd say three to four times max.

But often I only really want to tweet something once. In that case, it better point to something cool.

If you want to get clever about this (and I have before) you can take a top 10 list, and tweet point by point over a number of hours- e.g. tweet the #10, then later tweet the #9, etc.

3. Enlistment: Involvement of another person in linked content will get them to retweet- for example, people who are in are took photos you're tweeting about.

Voting either via social bookmarking site or contest on your blog increases involvement and thus chances of pass-along. The 2008 TwitterStache Awards got a lot of response and retweeting because it was not only funny but involved people by requiring their opinion and vote.

4. Reflexive Topics: Here I mean reflexive in the narcissistic sense- Tweeting about Twitter, Digging posts about Digg, and Sphinning posts about Sphinn all work very well because the topic is obviously of interest to the entire audience.

I don't use Digg much, though it's the best known social voting site. I've been thinking about taking the Digg badge off this site because of recent changes on Digg- the value of its traffic has long been debated, and their banning of many power users has led to doubt about its future value, period.

5. Fan Behavior: Involvement of people popular to a niche gets all their fans to retweet.

For example, a post on Sphinn about Matt Cutts or Rand Fishkin may not stimulate entirely positive comments, but do they tend to get quite a few of them.

6. Hot Topics: Evergreen topics are great (e.g. anything Google) as well as news, holidays... my Twitter Halloween post, which came out on Halloween, did quite well compared to other tweeted posts).

7. Humor: So many of my tweets are meant to be funny, and get retweeted with LOL's. I'm planning to write more about how much humor helps you in social media and social networking, so stay tuned.

--
That's about it- but if you're a programmer, contact me- I have some ideas for something very cool involving twitter and retweets... in fact, it's a linkbait thing we could both benefit from. :-)

Trick or Tweet: Top 10 Ways Twitter is Like Halloween

2008-10-31T07:56:00.000-07:00

Oooohhhh scary time. It's so scary. And so is Twitter, in some ways...

If you retweet or sphinn or digg this, I'll send you chocolate. Really.

Here are the Top 10 Ways Twitter is Like Halloween...

(Thanks to MandaOtto for help on the pumpkin image! She's an artist and stuff)

Tweets can be as sweet as candy.
Awwwww...

Everyone wears a mask. Ooh, that's deep! :-) "This is the top 10 funniest ways, not top 10 deepest ways, Socrates."

You've got to watch out for tricky treaters and tricky tweeters (marketing spammers!)

Sometimes the person behind the costume is a lot different than costume (or twitter handle) itself? SCARY different, lol. Kinda like dating websites. In other words, "Adults may appear sexier in avatar than in mirror."

Fake Sarah Palins are very popular. And HOT!!!
But fake Tina Feys are hotter.

You get lots of free candy. Wait... nope, never mind, that's not true. UNLESS you send me some candy! here's the address: 1705 Oak St #6, Myrtle Beach, SC 29577 ;-)

Just like wearing a superhero costume, Twitter makes you feel super duper.
It gives you great excuses to flirt.

Woohoo, and that's how Twitter is like Halloween.

Also, RT @chrisbrogan Today is the big Trick or Tweet day. This is a good cause, fun, *and* promotes good people. http://tinyurl.com/5dkcfs - it's for charity!

ScarySEO: Top 10 Funniest Things That Happened

2008-10-26T07:32:00.011-07:00

These are the Top 10 funniest things that happened at the ScarySEO Mini-Con.

I thought I'd get the list out fast- over the next few days I'll get video and pictures in to support it, so come back later! Feel free to tweet me if you don't get any of these.

And no, I can't count. There are more than 10.

(check out scaryseo pictures from Dana Lookadoo and Andrea "Gareth Jax" Scarpetta)

Top 10 Funniest Things That Happened at Scary SEO

The "Truck Nuts" Example in DaveSnyder's IUD presentation- oops he says it's IED, not IUD.
Carolyn Shelby kicking everyone's butt in a kung fu fight during her Q&A session
A Certain SEO Throwing Up All Over Somebody Important
Another SEO Getting Thrown Out of the Hard Rock Casino Twice
Me confronting the Russian mafia guy who asked me a Q&A question then ignored the answer, and then his wingman glaring at me for the next two days. And then finding out they might actually be a good prospective client.
DJPaisley- pretty much everything he did... cuz he's such a funny guy!
Loren Baker and Dave Snyder jumping onto the hood of my fabulous full-size rental Chrysler 300 CTS 700 HP machine.
Me and @pdimaio creating twitter accounts for @thewholeworld and @manonmoon
Me dropping spaghetti all over @iodine74's chair at Buca DiBepo
A completely wasted SEO telling us that the analog clock comes from the base-10 numbering system before going on a rant about the importance of prime numbers
UtahSEOPro not bringing any hair product and not being able to show off the FauxHawk.
The pole in the Friday night Limobus, and all theSEO's incredible pole-dancing skills.
Rhea's surprise entrance in She-Ra costume to speak at her ORM session (video below!)

Rhea's She-Ra Entrance:

Any I missed? Let me know and I'll add them!

Ok, John Santangelo added #14, a scary mysterious video from a well known internet industry rock star female, who's going by "SEO Champ Chick" - who is it???

And don't forget, it was SCARY:

The 2008 TwitterStache Awards

2008-10-20T18:54:00.000-07:00

Who has the best 'stache on Twitter?

ANNOUNCING THE WINNER...

WINNER OF THE 2008 TWITTERSTACHE AWARDS:
BUDESIGNS!

RUNNER UP:
JG_RAT

HONORABLE MENTION:
JONATHANHONG... although people were worried about his stache being fake.

Original post follows:

First, why should you care?

Well if you don't care already, then you're probably not fascinated by

Twitter,
Mustaches, or
Ridiculous topics.

Personally I love ridiculous topics. But if none of those work for you, here's the anthropological reason for this sociological experiment:

Twitter is a dynamic asynchronous social phenomenon that enables heretofore anonymous persons to suddenly and dramatically become micro-famous as a direct result of their idiosynchratic preferences, most notably through choices involving delectable deserts, nerdy conferences, or body hair.

That should satisfy - or at least confuse - the highly analytical and critical reader.

Now, on to the fun part.

I collected 15 exceptional twitter personas who were sporting cool staches.

I want you to Vote for your favorite TWITTERSTACHE

The winner of the 2008 Twitterstache Award will receive a valuable secret prize that I will figure out later.

VOTE in the blog comments below.

And tell your friends to vote. And your friends' moustaches.

@haveboard removed at his request :-)

Why Social Network Metrics Don't Work

2008-10-12T12:43:00.000-07:00

Why Don't Social Networking Metrics Work?

BECAUSE...

The opportunities you will find via Social Networking are both unknown and unquantifiable.

Social Networking could get you:

An incredible job you didn't know was available
A person who could mentor you into your dream job
Contacts who can extend your reach and reputation further than you can anticipate
A thousand other incredible opportunities

Since you can't know the potential value of these unknowable rewards for social networking...

You can't estimate its ROI.

So don't worry about it.

Do your social networking and see what happens.

:-)

New Social Media Blog

2008-10-12T12:13:00.001-07:00

It just seemed weird to be writing all that social media stuff on an adwords blog.

I thought I needed to start a blog more specific to social media, twitter, etc.

So here tiz!

Yay!